


A Story About War

by Tyranno



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Autobiography-style, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 01:38:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9576107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyranno/pseuds/Tyranno
Summary: I still remember my first post, although I don't think of it often. Malaysia, don't remember the year, the eve of the Omnic war. It was a different world back then.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Burtlederp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burtlederp/gifts).



> _This is a gift for Burtlederp, partially as a "house-warming" present for her new ao3 account, ~~and partially to bribe her into writing/posting fanfiction~~ AHEM _

I still remember my first post, although I don't think of it often. Malaysia, don't remember the year, the eve of the Omnic war. It was a different world back then. Me and the other handful of fresh-faced recruits paced the base restlessly, rounding the compound and passing the same beautiful view of the ocean seven times before we ended up at the gyms, where the leavers were doing a final work-out.

We must have made an odd bunch, gangly and spirited, ready to leap at an enemy that we barely knew about. The older soldiers had lost friends, had spent eight months bandaging wounds in the back of one truck after another, picking grit out of their teeth. They laughed when we asked what it was like 'out there'.

The more local, permanent soldiers seemed foreign as much as they were hospitable, but prone to playing tricks which, when directed at a group of twenty or so hot-headed eighteen to nineteen year olds who had been pent up in a compound barely a mile long, rarely ended gracefully. They quickly made a sport of it, playing on the most volatile newbies, myself among them. Once they used the carbon dioxide from my emergency life jacket to make carbonated drinks and when I was nearly lost at sea I had to swim back without it, returning to base soaked but with my face so red it was a surprise the water didn't just evaporate clean off me.

I still miss them sometimes.

 

*

 

I'm telling this out of order. The beginning—the real beginning for me—was in Indiana. My family was small, but not close, in a way that is hard to put into words—it was like something was missing in the connection between me, my parents, and my brother. For the later part of my childhood, we all drifted in and out of the house at odd times, spent too long at work, school, the bar, without really having a reason to avoid each other. I spent my time studying, brawling, trying and failing to pick up girls whenever I was in town. Kid's stuff.

The farm was always more of my brother's thing, although I did my fair share. He had a way with the livestock, and had a head-start on learning the tricks of the trade from my father, hearing stories of how his father, our grandfather, turned this farm from just a whole lot of dirt and rocks into a thriving business. 'Thriving' was perhaps a little optimistic, but not entirely inaccurate.

I remember a string of inconsequential stuff—bad school reports, getting into fights about a girl with a friend, pulling all-nighters studying, getting into a fight with my brother about the same girl, better school reports—but mainly, the way the seasons changed. In the long, winding country roads between school and home there was nothing but trees and bushes to look at, so the seasons ended up firmly cemented in my mind. The quiet sweetness of the long spring, the sudden vibrancy of summer.

I remember it being autumn when I left. The trees had been drained of their rich, near-fluorescent green, in october they became a warm amber. The sky was an inky black between brown leaves, and I had pulled my duffle higher on my back, given my mother a hug, my father a handshake and my brother a nod, and then I had left.

It was winter when I last came back. It was a good thirty years ago, I had been stationed nearby so I took a truck and drove up ruined mud roads to the place where the farm used to be.

I already knew by then, of course. I had forced them to evacuate as soon as I saw the front line shifting towards them. My mother was in India with my father, working as nurse, and my brother was in some other war-zone. Still, seeing it with my own eyes was strange, somehow almost exactly as I imagined it. I had pieced my mental image from a hundred other ruined landscapes, a hundred other rutted and destroyed homes. White flashes in the dark earth startled me, but on closer inspection they turned out to be painted wood, not bones.

The land was carved with deep, savage trenches, speckled with shrapnel. The mud was solid and sparkled with frozen dew. It took me a moment to remember where the house was because there was no evidence of it. Just a whole lot of dirt and rocks.

 

*

 

I had been a soldier little over a year before the omnic crisis, but after it had begun it took just two more years for me to be transferred to a set of barracks where I was always the most experienced soldier in the room. It was like I had aged a decade and been promoted several times in the space of two years of touring. New soldiers, just drafted, always seemed to be following me around, even though they were usually older than me, asking questions and wanting advice. They treated me like a battle-hardened, gun slinging tough guy. By then I had already seen half a dozen people be mowed down by omnics, so maybe to them I was.

The truth was, the Omnic Crisis ate through the old guard like fire on a log. It was the first time the military had fought against something that wasn't human, that didn't think or feel or move like us. For all their training, they only had to be unlucky once. The average life expectancy of a soldier dropped to two months, regardless of rank.

So the draft kicked in, and suddenly the ranks swelled with untrained, undisciplined soldiers who still thought like civilians, and it was a constant chore to train every new batch that came in. It happened so regularly it felt like I trained half of the US military single-handedly.

But with every new batch of recruits, training seemed to get easier, quicker. The general population came in already battle-hardened, already scarred. Judging the ages of people became impossible, teenagers picked up hard eyes and stress wrinkles simply from staying alive in times like these. The omnic crisis put such a strain on every country it warped everyone, from the children to the elders, we all became soldiers.

 

*

 

I met Gabriel Reyes in the husk of an office building, in what had probably been a lunch room. There was barely any light, and it was one of those moments where time became thick and syrupy. Glass crunched under my heavy boots, and my shoulders ached.

I had been staring at him for at least ten minutes, trying to work out if it was just a trick of the shadows or if he was really there. The weak streetlights from half a block away gave him the halo of his namesake, but his dark clothes and dark complexion made him near indistinguishable from the twists of metal just to his right.

I must have looked like a really strange fellow, standing still as a toy soldier, squinting into the shadows instead of turning on my nightvision.

When he moved I nearly had a heart attack.

He stood up in one long, grasshopperish stride, and we were eye to eye. I couldn't explain the thunder of my heart—excess adrenaline from the battle earlier, perhaps—we had nothing officially to fear from other humans at the moment, but in reality it didn't always work like that.

Reyes took a step closer, and I stood still. We were nearly nose to nose. He lifted a hand into the small space between us and I shook it.

“Gabriel Reyes,” He said.

“Jack Morrison,” I replied.

 

*

 

Gabriel and I were transferred as a pair more and more often over the next few years, and the number of men and women I trained dropped off steadily until I was working exclusively with elite soldiers, but more importantly, I was working with Gabe.

Surprisingly, between us there was no clear leader, whatever rank said. Instead we worked in tandem, like a well-oiled machine. We could tell each other's thoughts like they were written over our faces, from our body posture alone, and instantly moved to assist. We fought, but it was something that seemed therapeutic, play-fighting and brawling away from the rest of the soldiers.

I remember more of those years. Some moments are preserved perfectly in my mind, like a bug trapped in amber.

The first time I saw him sowing, it was a cold evening in the cement basement of a warehouse that doubled as barracks, the radio playing just quietly enough not to be intrusive. We were just sitting in the comfortable silence that marked our partnership out more than the talking. He snagged my jacket, pulled out a needle and began repairing the bullet holes. He didn't even glance at me, for all that I was staring.

It wasn't surprising that he could sow—many men could. It was surprising, oddly, that I didn't _know_ he could sow. It wasn't something he had ever mentioned before, not something he used in command. It was like I had forgotten that these people I served with existed outside the military too, that every one had a life before all this, away from the war. Reyes had been a child too, a long time ago.

I taught him to cook, after that. Reyes insisted he only needed to know how to snap ration packs open, but still he listen patiently as I told him the basics of breadmaking and putting together a stew. I had learned to cook on the farm, and had picked up a few recipes in my travels. We lit a fire under a relatively clean bucket and boiled some water. I taught him to chop and peel vegetables, although we only had a switchblade and a few old potatoes to work with.

 

*

 

It is hard to sort out the events of my life, at least on paper. There is a chronology to it on my military record, but aside from that, nothing else. It's a patchwork of places, events, with a handful of reoccurring people. The first five years of the Omnic Crisis, I was passed around from station to station to teach soldiers all over the front, with my stay at each one averaging two months. I had taught so many that by the end of the first half-decade I had a training regime off-by-heart, and gave every soldier the same talk, whether they were a softhearted chinese lad or a brazillian grandma with an AK-47.

I quickly had my fill of impressive sights. I shot Omnics from the roof of the Hagia Sofia, buried some bastions in rock in the grand canyon. I ran through drills under the northern lights, drove a jet ski with a mounted machine-gun around the harbor of Rio de Janiro. I was too mission-orientated—still am, to be fair. The only landmark I ever appreciated was the pyramids, with Ana, but that is a different, later story.

I don't remember when I first met Dr. Angela Ziegler.

The augmentation program is perhaps one of the few things I find it hard to talk about, only because I don't know how. My memories of those years are a mesh of pain and confusion. I remember this terrible agony in my spine, an awful, molten, burning feeling like they had replaced the bones with magma. Odder, but less painful feelings, when my limbs seemed to move more easily than normal and I couldn't pick up glasses without shattering them.

Sometime during those years, I met Dr. Ziegler. She was a lot younger than me, probably around eighteen, and showed it in how jumpy and shy she was around her colleages. I don't think she was ever afraid of me—or if she was, I was too drugged to notice—which was probably why I liked her the most, of all of the assistants.

She was sweet and clever, and always good-natured enough to listen to my ramblings. On one occasion she waited until I'd finished a story to kindly inform me I'd started telling the same one seven times over two days and only just now reached the ending.

In turn she told me about her parents, her homeland, but I must confess I remember none of it. The treatment leached my mind away, the drugs dominated those years.

I don't know why I bore the treatment with such such acceptance. It was unlike me. Reyes certainly did not. Perhaps what they did to him was different, or perhaps he didn't have a Dr. Ziegler to distract him from the pain and whirlwind of confusion. But he came out different, in mind as well as body. We both did.

 

*

 

We returned to service, for two months or so, although at the time we thought it was permanent. The silences we shared were no longer comfortable. I couldn't read him anymore. There was an edge to him, something dangerous lurking just below the surface, a cold kind of anger.

The opposite seemed to happen to me. I was tired and worn, blunted by age and conflict turned sour in my mind. The fire that had been burning in my chest since I was eighteen was down to embers. A deep part of me missed Gabriel, how he used to be, how _we_ used to be, but I was convinced it was too late. The damage was irreversible.

Gabriel and I jarred against each other. Every argument ended in us fighting like dogs. The soldiers we commanded avoided us, and we avoided them.

And then Overwatch happened.

Rounding up candidates was the most variety I'd experienced in a long time. It was fun, in a way. Encouraging, to be handed the reins of something big, something important. Reyes drifted further from me, became a stranger, but I hoped the distance would help us, both of us.

 

*

 

I spent one morning driving six miles through southern Utah, followed by a blossom of dust and the roaring of my motorcycle, to the nameless patch of land where Reyes had phoned me from. A part of me still loves Utah. Every morning the pillars of rock across the plains would blaze blood-red with the rising of the sun, and the wind would howl and hiss like something hunting me. I remember looking up at a sky so blue it was hard to describe it, of coyotes yammering, hidden somewhere in the rock.

Reyes had picked up some gang kid in the desert. I took one look at the kid—dressed like a cowboy, barely old enough to shave—and looked back at Reyes, eyebrows raised.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

Reyes folded his arms. “I'm serious.”

“Come on Reyes! How do you know he'll follow you? How do you know he's not just gonna escape, first chance he gets, or ruin the mission?” I asked, something like nerves or anger tightening my chest, “How do you know he's not going to shoot you the moment you turn away?”

Reyes shifted his stance, leaning back slightly. He smiled playfully, “Don't you trust me?” He asked.

I didn't, I realized then. I didn't trust him at all. Guilt flooded through my stomach and I deflated, shoulders slumping slightly. I thought for a moment, listening to the calls of coyotes somewhere miles away. “Fine,” I said, “It's your call. What's his name, anyway?”

“Mccree,” The kid said, sharply. He glared at me, eyes as sharp and cold as a desert dog's. “Jesse Mccree.”

 

*

 

I’ve been asked, a few times, when Reyes started to ‘go bad’, and I never have an answer for them. I have no dates for them, no shocking instances of cruelty. He was distant, snappy, but so was I. His right-hand man, Mccree, was far more hostile to me than he was.

I suppose it was more gradual than the clichés. The chasm between us grew wider, but incrementally slowly, like a glacier shifting. We spent years in that in-between time, when Overwatch and Blackwatch wasn’t one thing or another. When the two of us weren’t close anymore, but we weren’t yet enemies.

But while I might’ve pretended to be, I wasn’t blind. I don’t know when I noticed it, or if I ever really did back then, but I saw the gap between us. When Overwatch and Blackwatch were first founded, we worked in tandem. Overwatch first, and Blackwatch was on clean-up, mopping up the spills that were forgotten in the grand scheme of things. I’d start every mission with a brief, with both teams in the same room. I’d give them all the knowledge we had, and then delegate tasks to each group.

Later, as the missions grew specialized and more delicate, we splintered off. It wouldn’t be the whole of Overwatch on a single mission, but pairs of two or three. I stopped briefing them all together. I didn’t delegate tasks to Blackwatch, but objectives. I didn’t want to give them an order Reyes might overrule.

 

*

 

Ana, I met in Giza, had interviews and introduced myself at watch-point, but the first time I had a real conversation with her was in Egypt again, years later, against the backdrop of the pyramids. The sky was immense and impressive, a rich, cloudless blue. The pyramids rose like cleanly-cut mountains, the only feature for miles. Well, the only feature besides Ana's umbrella'd picnic table.

“Sit, Jack,” She said, and I sat.

She offered me some tea, but I politely declined.

“I'm worried about Reyes,” She said, while she poured herself a cup.

“There's nothing we can do,” I said.

“Maybe,” She said. “But it's our duty to try.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I sat with my feet in the sand, watching the dunes shift and change in the distance. Ana was never one to mince words, so she simply left me in silence, drinking her tea. The wind rattled the umbrella, threatening to rip it from the table, so I gripped it and forced it back into the sand. Ana fixed her radio while I admired the pyramids.

 

*

 

The relationship between Overwatch and Blackwatch was one that is hard to pin down. It was its own, peculiar connection, a connection that was mostly ignored by both sides, but one that bound them together despite everything.

It was like Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, if memory of that book serves. Overwatch was the pristine, presentable face of the doctor, and Blackwatch remained in his shadow, twisted but necessary. I can understand Blackwatch’s resentment of my team, with hindsight. I’m just not sure there was any other way of doing it.

 

*

 

I found Mccree, months after he had gone missing,

It was in Detroit, Michigan, some time in July, although by the look of the place it could’ve be anywhere. There was a long line of solid-looking brownstones opposite the diner, speckled with bullet holes. The last brownstone on the street had been completely destroyed ten years ago and was left in ruins. A cat nosed at the burnt black mass of something ashy. A table, at a guess, or a cabinet.

I knew that young cowboy by the way he sat, a hand resting a little uneasily at his hips were there wasn’t a gun holstered. He’d strapped his peacemaker to his belly instead, just below his ribs—sloppily hidden, if you asked me, although perhaps only I would’ve noticed the slightly lopsided hang of his shirt.

He noticed me before I noticed him, his dark eyes watched me hawkishly but he didn’t run. He didn’t even flinch when I sat down opposite him, swiping a menu.

“Long time no see,” I said.

Mccree lifted one shoulder, in an almost-shrug.

The plasticky diner smelt strongly of syrup and coffee. The sign flickered and twitched with bright colour. I idly watched waitresses in low-cut dresses smile and take orders, short dresses swirling around their thighs. Mccree’s foot began to tap.

“I’m not about to ask you to come back,” I said, setting the menu down again.

Mccree looked at me, dark eyes following the long slanting scars that split my face into thirds. The scruff on his chin was cut through with long, raised white lines, left by a knife most likely. A cold settled over his face.

I gave up trying to read his features. “I wanted to ask about Reyes.”

Mccree’s foot stopped tapping.

“He’s been looking into old files,” I pressed, “he’s shutting everyone out of his rooms, even Blackwatch members. Getting violent. He tried to shoot me, the other night.”

“I’ve tried my hand shootin’ ya,” Mccree said, lowly. Something was working its way across his face. His face pinched, eyebrows knitting together.

I set my jaw. “I don’t hate you, and I sure as hell don’t hate Gabe. We were in the army together, longer than Overwatch was a twinkle in my eye.”

Mccree’s face darkened even further. His teeth ground together, a vein in his jaw twitched. The diner’s sign was hanging an arm’s length above his head, bathing him pink in flickering moments. He sighed through his nose and opened his mouth carefully. He took a deep breath—

“Can I get you anything, sir?” A waitress asked, materializing above Mccree’s shoulder. Her brown curls fell over her shoulder, bouncing with every step. Her lipstick was a vibrant, bright red, and I couldn’t tell if it suited her or not.

I scowled at her. “No thanks.” She nodded, clearing away Mccree’s plate.

“I’ll have the bill,” Mccree said.

Whatever Mccree had been about to say was gone. The chill was back in his eyes, and he sat a little straighter.

“What’s wrong with Reyes?” I snapped.

“Couldn’t tell ya,” Mccree said, “Left my crystal ball at home.”

“Don’t play coy with me,” I said, “There’s something up with him, and you know what it is.”

“Nothing’s up with him,” Mccree set his cutlery straighter on his plate, tidying the napkins away, “Besides what d’you care? He’s still doing his missions, right?”

I glared.

Mccree glared back. “It’s really none of your business what’s wrong with him, anyhow. So you were friends some twenty years back,” Mccree shook his head, “So what?”

I ground my teeth. “This isn’t about me,” I said, “It’s about Reyes.”

Mccree stood, suddenly, knocking his chair back. There was something bright and sharp in his brown eyes. “I’ve had jus’ about enough of ya for one night,” He snarled. “If you’ll ’xuse me,” With a thump he stalked off.

I stood up to go after him, but a voice stopped me.

“Sir?” The waitress asked.

I looked at her. Her dark hair was escaping her careful bundles, clouding around her head like sheep’s wool. Lipstick coloured her front teeth. She bunched her dress in her hands.

“Aren’t you going to pay?” She asked.

 

*

 

It wasn’t long after meeting Mccree again, the night I died.

It’s all in the CCTV posted on the internet, if you want the blow-by-blow, explicit version, although perhaps that would be a little disappointing, considering it cuts out half an hour before the bomb goes off. I’ve watched it myself.

I don’t remember much of it. I remember lying, stretched out on my back, most of my insides open to the air. I remember pain so bad it was barely pain at all, pain that wiped my mind and bent my bones inwards.

I remember relief. I remember thinking— _finally_.

I remember waking up, hours later.

Pushing myself onto all fours was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was like moving mountains, like holding up the sky.

Everyone thought I’d died. I don’t have an answer for them as to why I’m still kicking. It’s a mystery. The final mystery. I was ready to die, to let all of this go, but my heart wasn’t. It was like God spoke through me, and told me, _not yet_ ,

_You still have work to do._


End file.
